Conservative activist, exploring questions of faith and politics

Opinion

At the age of 11 I was exactly one sticker away from completing Merlin’s 1997 Premier League sticker album – a very important accolade for any self respecting primary school boy back then! In the past two seasons I had been forced in shame to order the last stickers from Merlin – this time I was determined to finish the album myself, but try what may, I could not find a chap called Alf Inge Haaland who played for Nottingham Forest.

Then news went around the playground – Dee Chivers had the sticker! Two minutes later Alfie Haaland was mine, but I had lost something in the region of 20 stickers to get him, including several of the rarer ‘shiny’ club bages. Two weeks beforehand I probably would have traded him one for one. The reason for the sudden escalation in value is evident – it was obvious that I wanted the sticker badly enough that I would pay whatever it took to get my grubby pre-teenage mitts on it, and so Dee had absolutely no incentive to give me a fair price for it (The fact that 18 years on I still remember his name shows how much the injustice rankles!) I was so wedded to one outcome, it never occured to me that it would be less expensive to simply order the sticker by post, or not have revealed the need in the first place!

This anecdote, aside of revealing a rather sorry side to my character, neatly demonstrates a problem in our present politics – attaching such significance to an issue that you lose all sight of the cost, and potentially end up worse off as a result. Since the discovery of ‘issue-based politics’ by social scientists, there is one issue that without fail has a high valence with the elecorate – the National Heath Service. Any politician who dares impugne the honour of NHS or (heaven forbid) express the desire to abolish it, can profitably google ‘P45’ to discover what the electorate would be serving them up in May. Every politician upon becoming leader of their party falls head over heels to proclaim their love for the NHS, and their credentials as the best person to protect a national institution so cherished, that we boasted about it to the world during the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012. So emotionally charged is it, that the allegation Ed Miliband wanted to ‘weaponise’ the NHS made headline news.

The reason for this high regard is evident – we are all impacted by matters of health. Most of us are born in NHS hospitals; by extension, many of us will become parents for the first time in NHS hospitals.The NHS is the theatre for some incredibly emotional moments in life: relief when a diagnosis is positive, and shock when the prognosis bodes ill. Tears of joy when an operation succeeds, and tears of grief when you are told the worst. And over all of this – deep thankfulness, because most of the time the NHS does succeed in treating the sick, and all of us appreciate the difference it makes. With such emotional attachment, it is no wonder even those of us blessed with generally good health are righteously indignant that anyone should call the NHS into question.

And yet I am not sure that such devotion actually leads to good outcomes for our health service. When politicians get into a bidding war to top each other on health spending, nobody stops to ask themselves what incentives there are for wider healthcare providers to reduce their costs – they know that the NHS budget is never going to be reduced. Nor am I persuaded that politicians of any political creed decrying that their opponents will ‘wreck the health service’ produces the kind of thoughtful democratic accountability we ought to have for such a large publicly funded institution – the unfortunate example of the Staffordshire Health Trust is perhaps the most prominent recent example where this has gone badly wrong. The problem is, playing the NHS card is very sound politics – you connect the remark your opponent has made about the NHS and connect it directly to the voters’ emotive experience of the NHS – “What evil types these political opponents are, asking awful questions about our cherished national treasure!”

I was once asked what my stance as a Tory was on the health service – the assumption being that I’d be pro-privatisation! My response was: “The maximum number of people obtaining the greatest amount of care at a sustainable cost.” Yes, it is a politician’s answer insomuch as it does not spell out precise policies – but I think it captures what all of us mean when we refer to the NHS. We don’t want to mortgage our children’s futures for today’s health costs, but we want to ensure the money we spend today goes as far as possible to improve the health of as many people as possible. For me that actually means one very practical policy – don’t let any politician conflate their point of view to make it synonymous with the NHS, and potentially hold us back from improvements that could benefit the nation. They would, as with my schoolboy example, be so doggedly devoted to an ideal that they have failed to grasp whether doing so actually benefits the nation or not. And where it is done purely for politican gain, that person should hang their head in shame for putting politics before service to the nation.

A general rule of aspiration is that we want to leave a world that is better than the one we lived in to the next generation. It because of this hope that my focus is on the NHS we want to have, not the NHS we’ve currently got.

I came across a rather interesting post on Facebook – you had the opportunity to find out how many people on the electoral register shared your name. I was intrigued – until I saw that it was a Labour party website.

So today is a brief post with a big warning – expect more of the same. Social media is all about shareable content – it is sharing the links that say: this is fun/interesting/outrageous – it is the discussions between friends. That is why I begrudgingly admit it is a very clever scheme by Labour – it is an intriguing question, and one that you are likely to share with your friends when you find out – which makes them want to find out, and so it continues.

The net result however is that the Labour party end up with your details – and especially your email address. And that’s when you begin to get emails from ‘Ed Miliband’ (more probably written by the Labour Comms’ Team) asking if they can count on your support. It’s a classic data collection ploy, and all the more vital as the number of political activists declines and apathy to politicians increases – social media is an increasing necessity to reach voters, as indicated by £100,000 spent by the Conservatives on Facebook. Every party and political action group is trying to get your contact data, so they can get your attention – with the hope of getting your vote!

And so I say: “Beware of party games!” I’m not saying the parties should stop doing what they are doing, because we are under no obligation to help the parties whatsoever – we freely choose to give them our data. But I am advising you to be cautious dear readers when you see something purporting to be fun and diverting that asks for your email address and postcode – the chances will be that a party is looking for your vote!

(On a separate note, if you find a party is bothering you with their emails, you are entitled under the 1998 Data Protection Act to request any data they hold about you, and to insist your data be removed from their database)

Today’s blog is in response to a heartfelt observation by one of my friends.I believe he reflects the vast majority of voters – he is not disinterested in politics and recognises the great capacity it has for good, but is bitterly disillusioned. To him, our political class seem to offer nothing but more of the same, and the satirists and commentators offer criticism not alternatives. Understandably, he feels that politics offers little by way of hope, and wanted to know what hope those involved in politics are holding on to. My brief answer is quite well captured the so-called Serenity Prayer: that I would accept what I cannot change, change what is within my power to change, and have the wisdom to know the difference. As I reflected on my hope, three thoughts struck me.

The first was that my hope is not completely in politics. Hope is tied to the idea of tomorrow being better – that somewhat the ills of today will not prevail, but instead will be overcome – and the greatest challenge is the human heart. I sincerely believe that both left and right wing politicians subscribe to this. This is why education is so important to the left, and individual responsibility is so important to the right – the left believe in the fundamental goodness of the human heart, that society corrupts it, and that education overcomes it. The right believe the human heart to be fundamentally flawed, but that a society which requires individuals to take responsibility for their actions minimises the hurt caused and encourages humanity to be the best it can be. While both have a point, I do not set my heart on a false hope – instead as a Christian I look to a future hope when the human heart is renewed, and accept that in this life there will be trouble and strife – or to put it another way, I do not feel disheartened when things don’t seem to change and the world seems horrible and hopeless.

That said, I also recognise that politics can still make a difference. The Earl of Shaftesbury is an example that I particularly admire. His commitment as a Christian to a future hope did not cause him to withdraw or to give up. Rather, in view of that hope, he gave his entire energies to making the difference that he could. He was instrumental in bringing forward legislation to get children out of factories and coal mines, and established a myriad of societies, including the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I could list other Christians who have contributed to public life, most notably William Wilberforce’s work to abolish the slave trade, simply to reinforce the point that even if Christians have their hope placed in the future they can (and should!) make what difference they can now. It is also easy for all of the failures of government to overlook the fact that government does a lot of good – not least in the defense of the realm and the upholding of law and order. Even beyond that, history is ripe with examples of educational and welfare reforms by all parties that have made a real and significant difference to the wellbeing of society.

My third point however is something we should all bear in mind – politics is a nasty business. The reason is very straightforward – while it would be wonderful to believe all politicians were altruistic, the use of political power attracts people with less honorable motives, and often corrupts even those with good intentions. Even in my young political career I recognise the challenge that not everyone is motivated by the right reasons – and sometimes it is not within your power to do anything about it. I also recognise human frailty and the capacity for mistakes – the Earl of Shaftesbury poignantly opposed the 1832 Great Reform Act – our political heroes sadly are not perfect! Of course this is discouraging – but there are countless examples from Wilberforce to Rosa Parks of people who faced major opposition and discouragement – but they stayed in the game, they persevered, and in time they made a difference.

The limitations of politics do not make any less important the very real differences those in politics can make. It is part of the reason I am encouraging debate as well as engagement – while I can forgive new Labour for some of their well-intentioned policies, I cannot forgive them for turning politics into a narrative where if you dare to express reservations, ask questions, or suggest a contrarian view, you are somehow a bad person. Politics exists because we do not agree and tough choices have to be made, which is why I have little patience for the likes of Russell Brand and the Greens (and formerly, the Liberal Democrats) suggesting that ‘new’ government will somehow make a difference. When the new leadership steps up, in whatever form it is, they still have to decide what the government should and should not do; whom and what to tax, and by how much; and what laws we should live by – they still have to make difficult choices, and you are still going to have groups in society who take decisions.

I am an optimist – but I am also a pragmatist – and I speak from very painful personal experience that it is very easy to be discouraged. A year ago my doctor diagnosed me with ‘low mood’ – in essence a mild form of depression. It makes me likely to see the worst, not the best, and to be easily discouraged. My wife is very good at getting me to change perspective – I am the type of person who gets to the end of the day, and is sad because of the things I did not get done, rather than pleased because of the things that I did get done. She reminded me as I thought of politics not to be disheartened because of what I could not change, but excited for the difference I do make, however great or small that may be. And really I think that is what my hope is for politics – for everyone:

Don’t be discouraged – because the capacity of good men and women to bring change is incredible

Around this time last year there was plenty for Conservatives to be gloomy about, with the opinion polls showing Labour hovering persistently in the high 30s and the Conservatives struggling to break out of the low 30s. The latest opinion poll by Lord Ashcroft shows the two parties more or less neck-and-neck on 30% and 31% – and most other polls show a similarly small Labour lead, but basically too-close-to-call. It reflects an assertion that I made last winter which is worth repeating now: The Labour lead is ‘soft.’

For the benefit of the vast majority who (very sensibly) don’t usually bother with opinion polls, a ‘soft’ number is an unreliable number that is highly likely to change. The classic example of this is in fact the polling numbers for the main opposition party during the middle period between elections – lots of voters indicate that they want to vote for the opposition because the main thing governments usually do is annoy the electorate – an astonishing example is from September 2008 when an Ipsos-Mori poll had the Conservative opposition on an amazing 52%! When you consider that the Tories ended up with 37% of the vote in May 2010, you can see that the number was not a reliable estimate but rather a reflection of voter dissatisfaction with the Labour government of that time (and, given that most other polls weren’t that high, also likely to be an outlier!)

So one year on the polls have narrowed, and the main news I am taking is this – the Labour lead was soft, and probably still is soft. Lots of voters were angry and disappointed, and probably still are – but they aren’t sure they are ready to trust Ed Miliband and Labour. The impact of this is potentially huge – using electoral calculus I did a base prediction of seats assuming that the Conservatives had 30% of the vote, Labour 31%, the Lib Dems 8% and UKIP 17%. In this model, the Conservatives would have 273 seats and Labour 324 – to all intents and purposes, a Labour government. I personally think that the polls will shift between 2 to 3 points simply because of the soft Labour lead – adjusting for a 2.5% swing from Labour to Conservative (ie. Conservatives on 32.5% and Labour on 28.5%) puts the Tories on 308 and Labour on 292. I took the model one stage further and supposed that a reasonable percentage of the UKIP vote swings back to the Tories – not impossible given that Lord Ashcroft’s findings showed that over half the UKIP vote placed the Tories second. Reducing UKIP to 10% and giving an extra 7% to the Tories put the Conservatives on 352 and Labour on 254 – a clear majority for the Conservatives.

Of course all of this is supposition – in all of this the Lib Dem vote remained stubbornly at 8% – but it may recover. Labour may in fact recover voters from the Green party – and this model did not account for the rise of the SNP in Scotland. But it does show that a soft poll lead can massively hide what is actually happening. It is also my theory that if the Tories begin picking up reluctant UKIP voters, and/or Labour begin picking up reluctant Green voters, that will accelerate a poll trend away from the smaller parties and towards the two largest parties. At the moment the polls are telling voters it is too close to call and no party is likely to win a majority – that incentivises voting for a smaller party to hold the balance of power. If either Labour or the Conservatives begin pulling away into a clear lead and there is the possibility they can form a majority government, then the smaller parties mean begin to lose support in the polls as the voters focus instead on whether they want David Cameron or Ed Miliband in Downing Street – and the lower those numbers go, the greater the likelihood more wavering voters will leave the smaller parties and vote for the big two.

It could go either way and it is still too close and too uncertain to call – but I am absolutely certain that the Labour lead remains soft, and the Conservative vote is certain to increase between now and the election.

The Rochester by-election was somewhat overshadowed by this ill-advised tweet by the former shadow Attorney-General Emily Thornberry. In an instant, the media narrative changed from the Conservative loss to UKIP, to instead questioning if the Labour Party had lost touch with its traditional base, and was in danger of losing their support. While the narrative has largely focused on Labour, I would like to widen the conversation to a more fundamental point about modern politics – a complete lack of courtesy.

If you were to watch this video on youtube, you would be astonished. As the present day commentator observes, it contains the incredible sight of three politicians being polite and courteous to each other. As the presenter Robin Day observed in the feature, it is remarkable to consider that in 1979 Parliament was able to defeat the government on a vote of no-confidence, and do so with the minimum of rancour. Politics is always going to be a nasty and messy business, but I am convinced that there has been a shift in my own lifetime in the way politics is conducted. I would summarise the shift in this way: where in the past a politician would attack an opponent’s principles, today they would attack the person of the opponent.

The case of Emily Thornberry illustrates this. For years Labour made the tactical mistake of labelling the Conservatives as an out-of-touch privileged elite. The message they were trying to communicate was, by inference, that the Labour Party was the only party in touch with ordinary voters and their needs. But they achieved this not by attacking policies, but attacking people. We are not talking here about a person’s character or competence, two issues on which assuredly people of all professions must be held to account. I mean that the inference is made that because a person has a certain background, or stands on a particular issue, they are by definition a bad person. With so many of Labour’s Parliamentarians now coming from a more middle-class background, that fateful characterisation is now hurting them by association.

Another example that is worth referring to is the Scottish Independence Referendum. So determined were Labour (and, to be fair, the other parties) to get rid of the Tories in 1997 that every effort was made to discredit the Tories in Scotland as the ‘English’ party. Unfortunately for Labour, that sort of rhetoric has stuck, and with it the associate that the English and Westminster stand synonymous with the kind of Thatcherite policies Scotland largely rejected and resented – not least the Poll Tax. So when Labour expected to roll out their troops to secure the Union, they discovered to their shock that the voters had been listening – and associated the Union with the very demon image that they had conjured up to destroy the Tories in Scotland.

In actual fact, it was a Telegraph article by Dan Hodges that prompted me to write this piece – noting the failure of sections of the left to condemn a truly horrible tweet as part of a campaign against the Prime Minister. Hodges makes his case so well I will not repeat it here, but I agree wholeheartedly with his underlying sentiment – just because you are right, or in the right, does not excuse you to behave whatever way you like.

One of the values that informs my actions for life in general, and politics in particular, is the words of Jesus Christ to: “Do to others what you would have them do you.” For me, that means recognising my own human frailty – even with good intentions, and the best provision in the world, I am still going to make mistakes. It means recognising that politics exists not because we disagree about the good we seek for mankind, but because we disagree how to achieve that good. In short – it means accepting that sometimes I am going to be wrong, and that when a political opponent is wrong it doesn’t necessarily mean that their motives are wrong too.

This is not a challenge simply for the political left. The political right may be less susceptible, holding to the view that mankind is by nature flawed, rather than flawed due to their environment. That said there is a challenge for both – for the left to accept that everyone, including themselves, is fallible; and for the right, to recognise that however fallible mankind is, we’re capable of being better than that. We can start doing that, on every side of every debate, by bringing back some basic courtesy to our political discourse.

I was asked on Sunday by one of my friends if UKIP’s win in last Thursday’s by-election in Rochester and Strood was proof that UKIP were damaging the Conservatives more than other parties. In the manner of a true politician, I answered “Yes and no” – because I think the Rochester by-election revealed that all of the major parties are facing problems.

The Conservatives are not the only party to lose votes to UKIP – every major party in the by-election lost around 15% of their vote, and all things considered their vote held up remarkably well given that by-elections always produce a vote against the government. So UKIP are not just hurting the Tories. The problem however, is twofold:
(1) So far UKIP are only persuading Conservative MPs to jump ship. I suspect that is for the very simple reason that UKIP’s modus operandi is to get Britain out of the EU – and by and large most Labour and Lib Dem MPs are perfectly content to stay in Europe.
(2) The votes being lost from Labour and the Lib Dems (in the round – I suspect there aren’t many straight switchers from the Lib Dems to UKIP!) are votes that usually switched to the Conservatives. Labour will already be achieving a swing from the Conservatives by gaining former Lib Dems – the Tories cannot afford to lose these other swing voters.

The Lib Dems had a truly dreadful election – less than 1% of the vote and a mere 349 votes. They really have to be afraid of how badly their vote is going to collapse, and I would say even more afraid of how badly the cost of lost deposits is likely to affect them. Unless the party can gain a sense of pride and purpose, there is a genuine possibility that they will be utterly insignificant within a few years.

The biggest surprise however, is the magnificent mess Labour got themselves into. However much the party do their expectations management, there is no losing sight that Rochester and Strood was a Labour seat from 1997 until 2010 – they beat Mark Reckless twice. This should have been a moment like the Crewe and Nantwich by-election in 2008 – a large swing by the opposition against the government, indicating an opposition ready to govern. Instead of which, the party finished a distant third, and former Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry managed to make headlines for all the wrong reasons due to an ill-judged tweet (my comment on this to follow this week). The major worry for Labour is that they have banked all along on scaping home without appealing to a wide base – but their even their base vote seems less sturdy than before.

So good news for UKIP? I honestly don’t think it is that simple. Yes, they won the by-election. But the majority was nowhere near as big as predicted, and it is worth remembering that they had the benefit of the incumbent MP standing for them. The British electorate have always been prone to vote against a government in office – and right now the electorate is sick of all the major parties. In the same way I was convinced the Labour lead for much of this parliament has been soft, I am convinced the UKIP projections in the polls are soft. The voters are understandably cross with how distant their politicians are, but I am under no doubt that when faced with the ballot paper, voters will be asking who they want to have the keys to 10 Downing Street. I’m still not persuaded that UKIP have broken through, or that they have the means to hold the balance of power they want to have next May.

I will be commenting on today’s by-election in Rochester & Strood tomorrow when the result is known – it being foolish to pre-empt the mind of the electorate and the implications of their currently unknown decision! I will however venture a brief thought that both this by-election and the previous by-election in Clacton have introduced a principle that I would like to see remain in British politics: that when a representative defects from the party they stood for when successfully elected, they should resign to stand for a by-election under their new party label.

The infamous example of Shaun Woodward MP, one time member of the Blair government, illustrates why the principle is needed. Woodward won the safe Conservative seat of Witney in 1997, but defected to Labour in 1999. So confident was he of re-election, that he miraculously was reincarnated as the MP for St Helens in the 2001 General Election, leaving a young Conservative called David Cameron to win his old seat of Witney. The point is of course simple – the voters in Witney, even at the height of Tory unpopularity and favour for Tony Blair, did not want a Labour MP, yet for two years they had a Labour MP representing them.

Here I would like to applaud Douglas Carswell, even if I am very saddened that he left the Conservatives for UKIP – for he had the courage of his pre-stated convictions to stand anew for office once he took the decision to leave the Tories and join UKIP. He did not have to do so, and it carried a risk, but in doing so he has set a precedent that I hope any future MP will adhere to – certainly the Rochester and Strood by-election has been made more probable simply because Carswell set this high standard. Carswell’s commitment to honouring democracy and constituents will be sadly missed by the Tories, and is something all parties should learn from.

So regardless of whether Mark Reckless holds in the by-election or not, let’s keep the Carswell Convention, and ensure that MPs, and indeed all political representatives, treat their constituents with the respect they deserve.